Archive for the ‘Richie Ginther’ tag

This 1957 Ferrari TRC, No. 0672, is one of the most successful privately campaigned Ferraris in history. Bruce Meyer, who showed it to me last year at his garage, now owns this Ferrari.

John von Neumann bought this race car in 1957, one of only two TRCs built with the more powerful 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine. The other TRCs were equipped with a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine. Von Neumann owned both of the 2.5-liter versions. The other one just sold at auction earlier this year by RM Auctions in Monaco for 5.04 million Euros ($6.38 million).

John von Neumann was the Ferrari distributor for California and he was a race car driver. He had the inside connections with Ferrari, so he could order the larger engine when others had to make do with the 2-liter . The beautiful TRC was designed by Pinin Farina and built by Scaglietti.

This car was successfully raced by Richie Ginther and von Neumann from the United States to Mexico. In 1958, von Neumann decided to put a more powerful 300hp, 3-liter V-12 engine in this Ferrari and assigned this task to Ginther and Paul Primeau. Thus a powerful Ferrari hot rod Testa Rossa was born. In 1959, Ginther won at Lago de Guadalupe, Mexico.

John von Neumann sold this car to his friend Otto Zipper, and Ken Miles drove it to a win in Santa Barbara in 1962. This beautiful Ferrari has never had a serious crash and is in wonderful condition.

However, it was lost for many years, but thanks to the detective work of Bruce Meyer, this important Ferrari is back in great condition, after a complete restoration. Meyer dug it up in the Netherlands – where it somehow was involved with drug dealers through no fault of its own – then was able to reunite this Ferrari race car with the V-12 engine that was originally installed by von Neumann.

It is a magnificent car and an interesting blend of Ferrari and California hot rod culture.

Mike Gulett runs the classic car blog, My Car Quest, where he writes about classic cars, race cars, other cars that interest him and the people who made or drove those cars. He is also a car collector and writes from the perspective of a collector and an enthusiast. He has also written a couple of books about classic cars that are available on Amazon and from the eBook publisher Smashwords. His latest eBook, Twenty-Five Affordable Classic Cars is available on Amazon. Mike started publishing My Car Quest in November 2010 and has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years where he still lives with his wife and a few cats.

We haven’t yet heard from Richard or Craig, though they’re due back in the office today, but we thought we’d shed a little light on the events in Monterey, and fill in the details later.

The much-ballyhooed 1958 Ferrari 412S that Phil Hill and Richie Ginther once piloted sold for $5.6 million to an undisclosed buyer at the RM Auctions Monterey Sports and Classic Car Auction. Not the record for a North American sale, which went to the 1962 Le Mans-winning Ferrari Testa Rossa 330TRI in 2002 at Monterey.

And Robert Lee’s 1931 Daimler Double-Six Corsica Drophead Coupe with a V-12 – one of four produced and allegedly the last remaining – took Best of Show honors at the Pebble Beach Concours. CNN has some dish on it.